A long, long time ago, boys and girls, there was a very funny TV series called Get Smart, starring a Borscht Belt comic named Don Adams as a brain-addled superspy named Maxwell Smart and a cute-as-a-button gamine named Barbara Feldon as his trusty sidekick, Agent 99. This was before most of you were born. Adams left the building for the big Grossinger’s in the Sky a long time ago but Barbara Feldon, Agent 99, is alive and well and appearing this Wednesday night at 8 pm with the early music ensemble Parthenia, a Consort of Viols, in Hot Off the
Read moreI get a lot of review CDs. Most of them I listen to once, or not at all, and pass them along to the four or five people who have proven to be reliable reviewers. It is rare that a recording makes me stop everything and listen. Jenny Lin’s new recording of two major piano works by Ernest Bloch with the SWR Rundfunkorcheter Kaiserslautern, under Jiri Starek, is one of those rare moments. I must confess that I didn’t know the Concerto Symphonique but I’m inclined to take the word of David Hurwitz at Classics Today who has pronounced it “one of the 20th century’s great masterpieces
Read moreNew York Philharmonic. North Korea. Discuss. p.s. Steve Smith is on the scene. WGBH will air one of the concerts live online on Sunday, March 2, from 3-5 pm. Tuesday Update: Great picture of Steve at the airport in North Korea.
Read moreThe Yale at Carnegie concert series will honor distinguished faculty member Ezra Laderman at Weill Recital Hall at 8pm on March 3 with a program that features a career-spanning range of Laderman’s chamber works, from his 1954 Bassoon Concerto to the New York premiere of Interior Landscapes II for two pianos, written in 2007. Laderman (b. 1924) continues the line of distinguished composer-pedagogues at Yale, which has included Paul Hindemith, Krzystof Penderecki, and Jacob Druckman. His ties to the Yale School of Music run deep; after joining the YSM community as a composer-in-residence in 1988, he served as the Dean
Read moreAlex Ross has a splendid piece titled Inextinguishable about Carl Nielsen in the New Yorker (yes, the New Yorker) this week. I must confess that I had not paid a lot of attention to Nielsen until Alex tagged him as “most underrated” in the comments section here a couple of years. Since then, a series of wonderful new recordings–including the opera Maskarade and Thomas Dausgaard and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra/DR’s recording of Nielsen’s orchestral works–have been released by the Danish national recording label Dacapo I have found myself playing them every few days for months now and I always hear something fresh and new. I owe
Read more“Deze naam zegt jullie allicht niks, Marco Antonio woont nu nog in Gent, maar verhuist binnenkort naar Deinze. Als solist voor kamer- en orkestmuziek heeft Marco Mazzini internationaal opgetreden in volgende toonaangevende plaatsen : Carnegie Hall (New York), Tama Center (Tokyo), Paleis voor Schone Kunsten (Brussel), Bijloke concertzaal (België) en in het Conservatorium van Parijs.” Terrific article about our amigo Marco Antonio Mazzini in Deinzeonline. Alas, it appears to be in a foreign language but the pictures are nice and the video is splendid: [youtube]y33fTZJyVlo[/youtube]
Read moreCongratulations are in order to Joan Tower and our friends at Naxos for nearly running the table on the classical music goodies in last night’s Grammy love fest. Tower’s Made in America (Leonard Slatkin, conductor; Nashville Symphony Orchestra) won Best Classical Album, Best Orchestral Performance and Best Classical Contemporary Composition. I think it sounds like something written in 1939 which shows you what I know. Record of the year and song of the year (Rehab) went to the sad junkie from London with the unsightly tattoos. Regretably, it will probably be her last.
Read moreI wouldn’t have gone but if I had gone I wouldn’t whine about it later from the safety of my keypad.
Read moreI’ll start: Fog Tropes – Ingram Marshall When Crows Gather – Lewis Spratlan
Read moreRemember Galen Brown’s piece “Waiting in the Tall Grass” which was premiered by Relâche last November? Sure, you do. Here it is in two parts on YouTube: [youtube]ReYbo4hByHg[/youtube] [youtube]CDWvhfBT9nI&feature=user[/youtube]
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